Phil Sundeen thinks Deputy Sheriff Kirby Frye is just a green local kid with a tin badge. And when the wealthy cattle baron's men drag two prisoners from Frye's jail and hang them from a high tree, there's nothing the young lawman can do about it. But Kirby's got more grit than Sundeen and his hired muscle bargained for. They can beat the boy and humiliate him, but they can't make him forget the oath he has sworn to uphold. The cattleman has money, power, and guns on his side, but Kirby Frye is the law in this corner of the Arizona Territories, and he'll drive a rich man to his knees to prove it.

The book that inspired the epic movie, Dances With Wolves, and its sequel, The Holy Road, together in one volume for the first time. 1863. The last occupant of Fort Sedgewick, Lieutenant John Dunbar watches over the American frontier. A thousand miles back east, his comrades are locked in battle with the Confederates, but out here he is alone. His desolate posting will bring him into contact with the lords of the southern plains - the Comanche. He has no knowledge of their customs but Dunbar is intrigued by these people and begins a transformation from which he emerges a different man. A man called Dances With Wolves. The story continues, 11 years later in The Holy Road. Times are hard for the Comanche. The white man is closing in from all directions, claiming land, driving the tribes on to reservations. Should the Comanche fight or make peace? Misunderstanding and duplicity lead to raids and atrocities on both sides that can have only one conclusion. The man that was John Dunbar must go to war again.

The Real Western Canon

Larry McMurtry, the preeminent chronicler of the American West, celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a stellar collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the coming-of-age of the legendary American frontier.

Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken as a whole, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. The featured tales are not so concerned with the American West of history and geography as they are with the American West of the imagination -- one that is alternately comic, gritty, individual, searing, and complex.

Contributors
Wallace Stegner * Dave Hickey * Dao Strom * Dagoberto Gilb * William Hauptman * Jack Kerouac * Ron Hansen * Diana Ossana * Robert Boswell * Tom McGuane Louise Erdrich * Max Apple * Mark Jude Poirier * Rick Bass * Jon Billman * Richard Ford * Raymond Carver * Annie Proulx * Leslie Marmon Silko * William H. Gass